Lovely shoulders

This was Dylan Bernstein’s comment after Shari’s led primary practice on Sunday morning. You see I have rather tight shoulders and I was having a bit of a whinge about it. I guess it was just one of those mornings.

The led practice was great until we got to Urdhva Dhanurasana and I could hardly get up into the posture and found it extremely hard work due to the lack of rotation in my shoulders. What errupted was a wave of impatience, frustration and anger.

Normally when I practice Mysore style in the morning I do 3 Setu Bandhasana’s (bridge) and then 3 Urdhva Dhanurasana’s with blocks and then 3 of the full posture without blocks holding for 5 breaths – by which time my shoulders and upper back have opened enough to get the stretch into my back.

But in the flow of the led practice I rather foolishly attempted to go straight into the full posture. At the post practice coffee there were some useful suggestions made about how I could work on various exercises to try and open my shoulders but I realised that I just need to love my shoulders and forget about trying to achieve anything. Excellent advise for myself but seems hard to follow right now

Dylan’s comment was a well-timed reminder for me. 😉

After all Yoga is not about achieving proficiency in any one posture is it?

No comments yet.

Leave a Reply